


Die In The Arms of The Woman I Love

by CrosszeriaFallenAngel



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Brienne of Tarth is the Best, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Jaime Lannister Needs a Hug, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:53:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21736381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrosszeriaFallenAngel/pseuds/CrosszeriaFallenAngel
Summary: My take on Jaime's last thoughts. Really its just my outlet for how sad I was with how him and Brienne ended.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 4
Kudos: 36





	Die In The Arms of The Woman I Love

He remembers what he’d said then, a moment of truth in his lie of an existence.

  
He’d been naïve, didn’t truly understand anything. He’d told Bronn, someone he might have called a friend in another life, that he wanted to die in the arms of the woman he loved. And even then, when his mind assuredly told him that was Cersei, he couldn’t conjure up her ‘striking’ image. The face so alike his own. His mind had remained blank, but still he hadn’t realized what that meant back then. Did he love Cersei? Yes, his mind immediately answers, like a dog that’s been taught a trick. Yes, of course. Though his mind still thinks the words, his mind no longer remains blank. Instead he can only see one face in his head when he thinks of dying in the arms of the woman he loves.

  
He isn’t truly sure when it started, if his denial and self-loathing weren’t the only things keeping him going forward he’d admit to himself it was far earlier then he’d like to think.

  
A face many would call ugly, he finds beautiful. With eyes like sapphires. And a goodness he’s never known outside novels. Not a princess, like his sister, but a gallant knight. Who fought ferociously with more honour then anyone he’s ever known both on the pages of his novels and in real life. Her name doesn’t come to his mind straight away, his thoughts shielding him from it like a trauma. But her face enters his thoughts unbidden as clear as the waters of her name.

  
He doesn’t glance back as he rides away, doesn’t need another glimpse at the face ingrained in his mind. But still though he doesn’t need to, he wants to see it again. Wants… He doesn’t deserve to want. So he doesn’t look back. Instead he rides towards what he deserves, not what he wants.

  
He wants to die in the arms of the woman he loves. And if she knew his wants, she would follow him, and he would get his wish. She’d die with him and she’d do it happily. She’d die with him as he tried to save his sister. But just like him she shouldn’t get what she wants, she should get what she deserves. She deserves to live, to never know someone like him loved her. She deserves the moon and the stars and everything else he couldn’t give her. She deserves to get to be the knight he knows she is, a better knight than any in the pages of fairy tales. To save children and carry maidens from danger and have younger soldiers look up at her with admiration and respect.

  
Her life was better then anything he’d ever known and maybe it was his last selfish act to want to save it. To make the choice for her. To tell his last lie to the woman he loves to save her from himself. He knows she’d probably draw her sword on him if she knew the truth, give him that fierce scowl that had everyone calling her ugly but only made his stomach hot. Set those sapphire blues on him and order him not to go. And he wouldn’t have been able too, faced with her righteous anger.  
He laughs, into the lonely night air, the tears freezing on his face in the frigid wind. “I hate the bloody north.” He laughs, telling this lie to no one but himself this time.

Its when he knows he’ll die, here with his sister like he always knew he would, that he tastes the bitter tang of regret. Of course he regrets this, because no matter how much she’d assured him he was a good man… He wasn’t.

  
He wasn’t a good man and he wanted to have her sapphire gaze on him, looking at him like the hero he wasn’t as he died with his sister. He wanted her to cry for him, to never forget him. To know he loved her but couldn’t have her because he needed to make all the things he’d done right with this last action. He wanted…. But no, its hateful green eyes and Lannister golden hair shining up at him. And he grabs her as if to strangle her, meeting her eyes with a glare he’s never levelled on her.

  
Does he love Cersei? His sister who he’s been with since the day he was born. No, his mind supplies him. No, of course not.

  
And in their last moments, dying together, the Lannister twins realize two sad, but true things. He will die in the arms of a woman he never loved, not even slightly, to save the woman he did. And she will die in the arms of a man who’s life she has ruined with her twisted love. Because she could never let him go. A man who ended up hating her in the end.

  
Their love was nothing alike. And where one killed with their love, the other saved with his.

  
Jaime closes his eyes, ignoring the feeling of the woman in his arms and the castle crashing onto the vile pair they make. And, maybe as some last mercy, he’s allowed a different last moment then just his regret. His numb body no longer allowing him to feel the woman he hated in his arms. His body already crushed under the castle he’d always hated the sight of.

  
He whispers the name as his mind supplies the image with crystalline clarity.

  
“Brienne.” And he smiles, the name said with his last breath. His mind a thousand miles away from his sorry end. In that last breath he imagines everything that could have happened if he’d just stayed with her. He lives the life he never deserved, in that last moment which stretches long enough to allow him that.

  
And the final truth, that no one will ever truly understand, is that Jamie Lannister was nothing like his sister.

Brienne closes the book whose pages she’d written Jaime’s story on. Hoping that her words, however she found them clumsy, could help history understand the man she loved just slightly better.

  
Still the words that need to be written were hard to write and she aches as she stands up, away from them. They are her goodbye, her closure. And with them she thinks that maybe she will be okay.

  
For a moment she swears she sees him, stood alone and smirking at her like he always did when he knew something she didn't. Quickly, she looks away from the book she’d written her heart in. She blinks and the image disappears in a puff of smoke. But no, he isn’t there. Of course not. He's gone. He died in the arms of the woman he loved.

Or maybe there is one person who understands that final truth. A great, noble knight with sapphire eyes and the owner of a lions heart. An owner who will never know she owns it, but an owner none the less.

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo there it is. I just had to write it. :(


End file.
